There Once Was a Country in the Middle of the Suez Canal

Sailors trapped there for eight years in the 1970s formed a mini-nation to pass the time.

Over 2.5 million tons of freight pass through the Suez Canal every day, making up eight percent of all the world's cargo. It's hard to imagine a world without the venerable 120-mile waterway, but between 1967 and 1975, that's exactly what we had to make do with. The canal's eight-year closure led to the creation of one of the weirdest "micro-nations" in history.

Fifteen ships are caught in history's worst traffic jam.

The Six-Day War of June 1967 ended with Israel in control of the Sinai Peninsula all the way to the Suez Canal. As a result, Egypt blockaded both ends of the canal with mines, scuttled ships, and demolished bridges. This was a real problem for all the world's ships, but particularly for the fifteen ships who had been transiting the canal on the day it closed. Unable to leave, the vessels moored together at Great Bitter Lake, at the center of the canal, to await more favorable political winds. They had no idea they'd be there for eight long years.

The Sinai Desert slowly covers the stranded sailors.

The ships were flying under eight different flags: four were British, two each were West German, American, Swedish, and Polish, and one each French, Bulgarian, and Czechoslavakian. The suddenly marooned crews called their little island of moored ships the "Great Bitter Lake Association," but, as years of desert sand swept over the decks, many began to use another name: the "Yellow Fleet."

The Association provided all the comforts of home.

The founding fathers of this new country did their best to keep busy, meeting up for weekly church services on a German freighter, movie nights on the Bulgarian ship, and pool parties on one of the Swedish ships. During the 1968 Olympics, the sailors held their own "Bitter Lake Olympic Games," with lifeboat races in the canal and soccer matches on the deck of the MS Port Invercargill. On Sundays, the men would gather aboard the MS Nordwind and produce their own postage stamps, which collectors were requesting from all over the world. Many letters from the Great Bitter Lake Association were actually delivered, even though they were from hand-drawn labels from a made-up country.

Only two ships of the Yellow Fleet ever sailed again.

As the years passed, the shipping companies gradually rotated the sailors home, until only a skeleton crew remained for maintenance. In 1975, with Egypt and Israel nearing a diplomatic agreement, the canal reopened, but only two of the ships in the Great Bitter Lake Association were able to leave the lake under their own power. The Münsterland and Nordwind arrived in Hamburg in May 1975, with 30,000 cheering spectators on hand to greet them. Their round-trip voyage to Australia had ended up taking eight years, three months, and five days.

Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia. This article has been corrected. Tajikistan, not Uzbekistan, is one of five neighboring nations.